Comments on: Extenders: now 400% more pretty.

By: Mathias Brito

Mathias Brito — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:24:26 +0000

Please add a way to close all the notifications, maybe click with the middle mouse button! sorry if someone already post a comment asking the same thing i had no time to read all the comments…

Hugs for all…

By: rscheepmaker

rscheepmaker — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:48:35 +0000

@gadnio: I think having the ‘Natification from’ is clearer: kuiserver will also be merged into the system tray, so it can also show file transfers, so it’s not automatically a notification.

@Danni: Something like that is certainly possible. This is however something that needs to be done in kmail.

@DanaKil: With the current default plasma theme it is opaque, but themes could also make extenders translucent if they wish. The clicking through idea is a good idea, and I’ll add it to my todo.

By: DanaKil

DanaKil — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:47:11 +0000

just a small question : is the popup still completely opaque when desktop compositing is activated ? Do you think it is possible/usable to click in a popup (in the background, not on a button or on the title bar) and the click can “pass through” the popup and activate the window behind the popup ?

I like popups but they are a little bit annoying when they appears and covers something that I’m reading (especially annoying with a small screens)

oh… and great work, thanks

By: Danni Coy

Danni Coy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:33:22 +0000

The contents of the notification are up to the individual apps right. This might be off topic but it would be cool if mail was coming from somebody in your address book to show the picture of said person from the address book (as the Icon) and mention who the mail was from in the notification.

By: gadnio

gadnio — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:59:38 +0000

Hi,
I like the idea very much. I have some minor comment to make:

The string ‘Notification from’ is placed on all the notifications and (assuming this will be the most used notification platform) I think there is no need of it (we will all know the balloon is for notifications, so there is no need to remind that every time.) Just having the application name in the title is enough.

By: rscheepmaker

rscheepmaker — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:01:59 +0000

@Karper: well, as part of the galago spec, applications can specify a timeout for their notifications, and I think we should just use what applications specify as timeout. Which can mean it doesn’t automatically close, but in my experience, notifications that don’t expire do that for a good reason. But I like the idea of showing a time out bar for notifications that do time out. This would be something for 4.3, but it’s certainly a feature I’ll consider implementing.

@Jan: dat was ik zeker van plan.

By: Jan Zijlstra

Jan Zijlstra — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:50:24 +0000

Ziet er bruut uit Rob! Lekker zo laten.

By: Karper

Karper — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:01:38 +0000

I’m surprised no one mentioned a very interesting solution that could be applied to notifications that the source applications do not close; I’m talking about implementing a time-out bar of 30 seconds or more (or better, let the users choose!) on the notifications. If this sounds like deja vu, it is! Amarok (1) had that for all this time! The timeout bar freezes on mouseover and unfreezes once the mouse is moved off.

This could be a great solution to clear up a lot of notifications that get left behind.

The default look is quite beautiful. Keep up the good work!

By: Jamboarder

Jamboarder — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:00:10 +0000

@Flavio:
> The Oxygen one is way too cluttered to be a good DEFAULT theme.
^^^ Subjective: hence it is a “matter of taste” ^^^

> current Oxygen is a bit over-the-top
^^^ Subjective: hence it is a “matter of taste” ^^^

> Oxygen is a good pimp-you-desktop theme, not a good DEFAULT.
^^^ Subjective: hence it is a “matter of taste” ^^^

How much companies spend on design an UI research has no bearing on the fact that whether *you* think it looks “good” or “beautiful” is subjective: a matter of taste.

Many users are convinced that the Oxygen theme (Icons, widget style and plasma desktop theme) looks “good”, is “beautiful” and works very well as the “DEFAULT” theme. For those that don’t, here are the most constructive options I can think of:
1. Provide useful feedback that goes beyond “over-the-top” and “good for pimp-your-desktop”.
2. Choose an existing theme that matches your ideas of what DEFAULT should look like.
3. Make a new theme that matches your ideas of what DEFAULT should look like.

Everybody happy…

Of course, if you’re unwilling or unable to do any of the above then, unfortunately, you’ll have to use what’s available or, if what’s available is abortive to using KDE, use a different DE or OS. Everybody sad… but, unfortunately, no different than any other FOSS or proprietary software project.

peace

By: rscheepmaker

rscheepmaker — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:49:07 +0000

@Flavio: “together with what?”
together with the rest of the default plasma theme. extender-background is even a copy of the standard applet background in this theme, and the drag handle element is also used in other places, like the background of the plasma tabbar widget. The default plasma theme has a consistent style.

“Go tell companies around the world that spend billions in design and UI research.”
And still not everybody likes the end result. Simply because it’s a matter of taste, Of course you can spend a lot of money and hopefully come up with a design that at least a majority of the people likes. (or spend a lot of money and come up with something that’s still extremely ugly, like the default windows xp theme or those old school hideously colored imacs) But a design that everybody loves is just not possible, and that’s why we have support for theming in plasma.

“probably I didn’t used the capitalized DEFAULT word enough times in my previous comment.”
On the contrary. It’s just that this is a non issue. KDE provides a default theme, oxygen, which is consistent, has a clear vision, and a large, motivated team of designers to maintain it. In my opinion (well, I know a lot of people who think this way) it looks quite sexy, but that’s besides the point. We deliver a decent default that is maintained through the life cycle of KDE4. I’m interested to know why you think your opinion on what a good default theme should look like is worth more then all those people (mainly volunteers) who actually put a LOT of time in oxygen.
Besides, even distro’s can choose to change the defaults…. openSuse default to aya for example. I really don’t see the problem you’re making from a non issue.